


the price of our designs

by cheloniidae



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: The Old Light is winning, and Monomon comes to the Pale King with a plan.(It plants its whispers like the wind planting spores, scattered without thought or strategy. It is instinct; it is reversion to base nature. It hasn’t the mind to spy on its enemies as they conspire to contain it, andit is winning.)
Relationships: Monomon the Teacher & Quirrel (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 53





	the price of our designs

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of a deleted fic.

The Old Light whispers in Monomon’s mind, and she studies it as she would the squawk of a caged vengefly. Its presence is a constant; its offers are variables. Here, in the darkness of the Stagway tunnel, it promises power. Accept it, and she will be whole; accept it, and she will be strong. But Monomon cares nothing for strength. All she cares for is that which the Old Light seeks to erase: her mind, her work, her kingdom, her King.

USURPER, shrieks the Light, its voice a white-hot needle. DAWN WILL BREAK. I SHALL BLAZE FREE.

“Madam—” Chitinous fingers grabs one of Monomon’s tentacles; even in her surprise, she links the voice to the hand and holds back her sting. (The Old Light would break her of this, for her instinct is to sting all not of her kind.) She turns to look at Quirrel in the seat behind her, and he removes the hand, holding it close to his chest, abashed. Noble, proper Quirrel. How well she chose her apprentice. “You were letting go,” he says.

“Thank you.” Monomon winds her tentacles tightly around the arms of her seat. The Stagways were built for bugs more affected by gravity than she; all she can do is moor herself to the saddle and allow the Stag to pull her through the air like a child’s toy. It’s an unpleasantness she avoids whenever possible, but the Old Light is winning, and Monomon has a plan to present to the King. There is no time for comfort.

“Was it speaking to you again?”

“The subject of my thoughts displeased it.” Monomon dislikes being cryptic with Quirrel, but she has no choice. To speak openly of the Old Light in the stag’s presence would weaken him to its influence, and she will not help the enemy.

When they arrive at the station, Monomon can barely thank the stag before he bounds off, laden with new passengers. The platform is filled with supplicants coming, going, murmuring. Bugs from all corners of Hallownest make pilgrimage to the White Palace, clothed in the purest whites they can find, to offer prayers outside the gates. In all of Monomon’s visits here, they have been a constant. But she has never seen so many, nor felt their desperation so keenly.

The throng parts for her, some bowing, some scattering whispers of _Teacher_ in her path. Quirrel follows close in her wake, garnering no such recognition. Outside the station, the crowd thins, and the palace rises before them. The dome of its body tapers to a gleaming point far above; curved spires shoot from the earth around the palace, stretching towards the cavern ceiling, crowning the palace as though the kingdom itself has anointed this place. Nearby, a supplicant throws himself prostrate at the sight.

Quirrel’s footsteps fall silent, and Monomon stops to allow him this moment of awe. If all goes well, this sight, this moment, may be her last gift to him. No matter what comes, he will have the White Palace etched in his mind, proof of what might be achieved by higher thought. “To find this marvel at the bottom of the world,” he says. “Only the exterior, yet a sight finer than Hallownest’s heart.” And then, more intrigued than awestruck: “What kind of bugs are those? I’ve never seen their like.”

Monomon follows his gaze to the main gate— a Hallownest Seal writ large, metal-wrought monarch wings jutting from either side. Two bugs in polished armor stand guard, fearsome claw-blades in hand, but they are not the guards she remembers from her last visit. She looks closer: the four arms, the white eyes, the black shells that reflect no light.

Terror crackles through Monomon like a shock of electricity, but the feeling is not her own. “I believe,” she says, barely able to hear her own voice above the Old Light’s snarls, “they are the Void constructs the King wrote of.”

Quirrel peers up at her mask, as though he might divine something in the porcelain. “It troubles you.”

“It is afraid.” Monomon flicks a tentacle at the (ANCIENT ENEMY) constructs. 

A grim battle-satisfaction twists Quirrel’s mouth. She took him from the ranks of the City’s guards-in-training; as of late, he reminds her more and more often. “It’s right to be.”

At the gate, one of the constructs inspects her Hallownest Seal, its wings engraved with her name and title and station. She inspects the construct in turn. Its shell seems to swallow all light; she looks for a shape beneath the horned helmet and finds only darkness. The King wrote to her of his success, but to see the proof before her, Void harnessed to shape and purpose... With these creatures, Hallownest might be saved.

The gates open. Quirrel — Monomon’s guest, a rare permission granted to her by a mark on her Seal — passes through first. He’ll need his own Seal, his own title, soon. There is much for her to arrange.

Another Void construct — how many has the King created? — leads them through the palace’s winding halls of glass and metal. Every inch is bathed in light; wherever a window fails to reach, a globe of lumaflies takes its place. Quirrel steps lightly, as though afraid of defiling the palace floors, and says nothing more than the occasional murmur of awe. The White Palace has a way of making newcomers forget their troubles.

The construct takes a right where Monomon’s habits expect a left, but of course they aren’t being taken directly to His laboratory. Quirrel is a stranger to the King. He must be given proper introduction.

The doors to the throne room each bear half of the King’s Brand, perfectly symmetrical, half again Monomon’s height. An inscription is nestled inside the inner horns of the Brand: _enter, and face King and Creator._ Quirrel hesitates, falling behind, and Monomon stays with him while the construct marches onward. She gently touches the side of his shell, just above the joint of his arm. “His Majesty will be pleased to meet His future archivist,” she says. He dislikes talk of succession, but she must put the idea in him.

The construct opens the heavy doors, splitting the Brand in two, and they enter.

The doors clang shut behind them.

The Old Light screams and does not stop.

The Pale King sits resplendent on His USURPER  
throne. The lanterns here are dim and HEAR  
small; the King’s own light illuminates ME  
the room. Oh, how bright He is! The I  
Light that took a polyp who drifted in WILL  
on the wind and gave her a mind. The NOT  
Light who gave her charge of that which BE  
she cares for more than anything. FORGOTTEN

Quirrel falls to his knees, touching his mask to the floor. Monomon, unable to bow, inclines her head. It is sufficient; the King has never begrudged her body’s limitations.

“Monomon.” The Old Light cannot drown the King’s words in its own, though it tries and tries. All things have resonant frequencies, and the citizens of Hallownest are tuned to the Pale King’s voice. It is a crystal bell struck inside her. “Whom have you brought before Us?”

“My apprentice and chosen successor, Majesty. Quirrel will serve You as I do.”

“Rise.”

Monomon raises her head. Quirrel is slow to get to his feet, still adjusting to the King’s presence, the light of Him. She has spoken with His Majesty enough that the effects are dulled on her, but Quirrel has no such immunity. She misjudged how strongly it would affect him.

The King’s gaze is focused on her. “The Plague hears us,” He says. He must sense the Old Light inside her mind. She’s formulated dozens of hypotheses for why it came to her and not to Quirrel, and she’s discarded each in turn. The Old Light plants its whispers like the wind planting spores, scattered without thought or strategy. It is instinct; it is reversion to base nature.

It hasn’t the mind to spy on its enemies as they conspire to contain it, and _it is winning_.

“It hears but does not understand,” Monomon answers. “Your Void constructs surprised it, though their existence was known to me. It fears those creatures that can contain it.”

She once asked the King, in His foresight, when she would die. The expression He wore then, as he forbade her asking again, is the expression He wears now. But He should be pleased, should He not, with the fear of His enemy? For months, the Plague has sown terror through the kingdom. They’ve come a step closer to stopping it.

Is it concern for her? “My mind is my own, Majesty, and my loyalty Yours eternal. It has no hold on me.”

“This is known to Us,” says the King. He leaves His throne in a flutter of diaphanous wings. (KILL HIM, the Old Light screams for the seventh time.) When Monomon first met Him, His stature surprised her. Even with His crown of horns, He’s not half her height. “Quirrel,” He says.

“Yes, Majesty?”

“A Kingsmould—” that must be the name He has bestowed on the guard-constructs “—will show you to Our laboratory. Transcribe the research you find there for the Archives. We would speak with you alone, Monomon.”

Quirrel is ushered out one side door, and Monomon follows the King through another. She has no doubt Quirrel will do well. His task is one Monomon has done countless times; she takes it as a sign that the King has accepted her choice. They both lack kin-heirs, but only He is undying. Monomon must make her preparations for the inevitable.

She never thought she would go willingly into the darkness, but if the King accepts her plan, as she has little doubt He will...

The side-room becomes a hallway, and the hallway becomes a tight, spiraling staircase. (Monomon pulls herself down with the help of the bannister, fighting her own buoyancy.) The King says nothing to her. On all her past visits, whenever He had cause to walk with her through the palace, He took the chance to ask about her work. Monomon ventures to break the unusual silence. “You’ve not been alone in applying our theories,” she says. “Constructs of electricity and artificial flesh guard the Archives in my absence.”

The King does not reply, and Monomon does not try again. His silence worries her more than the Old Light’s screams.

At last, they reach their destination: a small, dimly-lit room with only a bassinet for furniture. The Queen’s vines are thicker, here, dangling leaves above their heads. The Old Light snarls in agitation at her serene presence.

The King moves closer to the bassinet, His light illuminating the creature inside.

The Old Light shrieks at it as it did at the Kingsmoulds, and for a moment, Monomon mistakes the black of its carapace for the true darkness of a Void construct. But it cannot be one. Enough light reflects from its chitin to give it shadows; it has nothing but a mask to enforce the shape of its body; its eyes are black where the Kingsmoulds’ were white. Monomon rarely replies to the Old Light, but she throws a barbed thought in its direction: _If you must yell at me, at least be correct._

“This is the culmination of our research,” the King says, using the form of _our_ that includes her. (The subtleties of language, another of the gifts He bestowed on bug and beast.) At His voice, the little creature pushes itself up to standing. The King falters, the expression from the throne room marring His face once more. Monomon turns her attention to the creature rather than face Him. Its mask is not a mask at all, but a shell encasing its entire head, leaving only its ink-black eyes uncovered. “The dreams of Void alone cannot contain the Plague,” the King continues. “To form a vessel, it must be hardened with focus.”

The creature’s head is the white of solidified soul. Monomon reaches the most likely conclusion, and she resents the Old Light for being right where she was not. It orders her to KILL HIM for the ninety-second time, mindless of its small victory, of anything but its hate and its will to be free. To be bested by something like that— she resents it even more.

“From where comes the soul?” she asks the King.

“God and Root.”

Her assumptions blind her to the obvious meaning. Several moments pass — the creature waving its arms delightedly at the King, the King pointedly looking away from it — before Monomon says, “Your progeny.”

“An imperfect experiment,” the King says. It is not, on reflection, a denial.

“What makes it imperfect?”

“The Plague feeds on hopes and desires. It would break free from the dreams of this impure vessel.”

The vessel, recognizing the word for its kind, reaches out for the King. He ignores it, and Monomon tries to do the same, though she cannot see why. She hasn’t known Him to be so callous. “Am I here to assist you in discovering the secret to purity?”

“There is none,” the King says, a tightness in his voice like a rope straining under too much weight. “Its purity is a matter of chance.”

Suddenly, sickeningly, Monomon understands His treatment of the vessel. The King’s prescience does not free Him from the laws of probability. She learned this early in her work with Him, so long ago that she scarcely remembers a time before she knew. Some things are beyond even the powers of God. If He foresees that the twentieth child will be perfect, He cannot skip to its creation; He must create twenty and bear nineteen failures. (From His mien, she thinks the number more than twenty.)

“How many?”

“Five hundred thousand. The impure will be returned to Abyss and Void.”

Monomon was prepared for two hundred, three hundred; she was not prepared for this. Five hundred thousand, and all but one a waste. She is glad, for once, to be one of the kingdom’s faceless. Her mask cannot betray pity for the nameless children who will perish in the dark, nor for the King and Queen who will create them.

She has no mate, no kin, no offspring. She is the only of her breed in all the kingdom. The Archives are her beloved creation, as His is Hallownest. He would sacrifice anything to protect it. She would do no different.

The King spares her from having to answer that dizzying number. “Our Knights know only that there will be a pure vessel.”

Monomon has become familiar with His knights over the course of her duties. For all their loyalty, Isma and Hegemol’s kind natures — Ogrim’s, too; she always forgets him — would break under the weight of the lost vessels. They cannot fight this battle of dreams. It would be cruel to reveal the consequence of their impotency.

“Hallownest will not forget the cost,” Monomon says. He is asking her to witness this sacrifice, and witness it she will.

The King inclines His head. Tired, she thinks; she has never seen him tired before. He is ancient, but this is the first time she has thought of Him as such. The moment passes as quickly as it came, a shadow flitting across a lantern, and He beckons her to follow. “Come. Your apprentice is nearly done.”

As they leave, the little vessel makes noises that are not quite noises, and the King does not look back.

The equipment in the King’s laboratory has changed since her last visit. Large vats of writhing Void, much more than she has ever seen outside the Abyss; black spell-eggs, unhatched, split in twain, with a four-limbed shape — a mould, a _King’s mould_ , oh — carved deep inside; Kingsmould armor, scattered across every surface, floors and tables and shelves. She has always liked the laboratory’s disorder, a marked contrast to the rest of the palace. Like peering under a shell to the living thing beneath.

Quirrel stands at a desk near one of the vats, not daring to sit where the King once sat. Monomon often has to break him out of his work, remind him that he requires food and drink. His focus is stronger than his body. But the King is a beacon, and for the first time since Monomon took him under her tutelage, Quirrel looks up from his papers unprompted. He bows low. “Forgive my slowness, Majesty. I need only a little more time.”

“Continue.”

The King sits, regal in every movement, and Quirrel’s quill scratches against parchment. He is observing Quirrel, measuring him, verifying Monomon’s judgment with his own. She has no doubt, no doubt at all, that Quirrel can pass any test the King can conjure. The pull to look at the King might be too strong for some bugs, but Quirrel’s focus is unwavering.

“It’s finished,” he says, the next time he looks up. Monomon can tell from his face alone that the King has elided the birth-source of the vessels, and the number that must be discarded, from His notes. Quirrel could not hide his sympathy so well. “A mix of soul and Void. Ingenious, Your Majesty.”

That word alone gives Monomon hope. If she believes in anything, she believes in this: the Old Light must be defeated through works of the mind. Its base nature must be its downfall; its rejection of thought must kill it. Only then will Hallownest’s victory be absolute.

“Majesty,” Monomon says, “we came to you with a purpose. We’ve a plan to protect the construct that will contain the Plague.”

“Speak.”

Monomon nods at Quirrel. He must become accustomed to bringing ideas before the King.

“It was formulated under the assumption of a container of pure Void,” Quirrel begins, hesitantly, “but the principles will hold. The Madam and I uncovered an old spell used between mates within the moth tribe, designed to pull a living dreamer into the dreams of another.” He takes a roll of parchment out of his satchel, and presents it to the King. “The details of spell and plan are written here.”

“The container’s dreams will be sealed against the Old Light’s escape,” Monomon continues. (The Old Light’s screams reached a new height at the word moth; she is careful not to raise her voice above it.) “Once something enters, it can never leave. If those who cast Seals of Binding on the container’s vault are pulled into the container’s dreams as well, their sleep and spell will last eternal. While the container stands, they remain. While they remain, the bindings hold.”

“While the bindings hold, the container stands,” Quirrel finishes. “The key is hidden inside the lock.”

The King considers it, examining the parchment, and the two archivists await His judgment. Monomon doubts their work will be found lacking. “Clever,” He says, at last. “Our clever subjects. How many dreamers?”

“Three,” Monomon answers. “Any more, and the dream risks destabilizing.”

“They must be strong.” And then: “Herrah.”

Quirrel looks to Monomon in alarm. His wide eyes seem to ask, _Is it that simple?_ She flicks a tentacle in affirmation. The King thinks quickly and works quickly, and He does not linger on choices once made. They brought a plan; their plan was good; their plan will be put into motion.

“The Beast Queen has no love for Hallownest,” Monomon says to the King. She has met Herrah only once — her soft, drifting body is not meant for the tight corridors and writhing spikes of Deepnest — but from that meeting, she drew two conclusions: Herrah cares everything for her own realm, and nothing for the King’s. “Would she agree?”

“We know what she would demand in exchange, and We would grant it.”

Before they left the Archives, Quirrel asked her who she thought the dreamers should be. _That choice belongs to the King,_ she had answered, and for all but one of the three, she had meant it. But she thinks of the room with the bassinet, the countless children He will cast away, and how His light had flickered. How much can the King give of Himself, before there is nothing left?

This is a burden she can take from Him. “Lurien would volunteer, were he here,” she says. The necessary name, the cruel name. She is certain the King would have reached the same conclusion. Lurien’s power far surpasses even her own, and his affections for the King are a poorly-kept secret, even to archivists who spend little time in the City and less time at court. She cannot spare Lurien from this. He would not want to be spared from this, the highest of duties, the protection of beloved King and sacred kingdom.

“Lurien,” the King agrees. His face reveals nothing. How small a price that must seem, next to the vessels. “The third remains.”

Monomon has been delaying this moment, selfishly, unreasonably. If her resolve trembles, it is the flap of a vengefly’s wings against the gales of the Howling Cliffs. It must be done. It shall be done. “Myself,” she says. “By Your decree, Hallownest’s knowledge is mine to protect. Why should I not pay the price of our design?”

She sees understanding wash over Quirrel. He is here so that the King will know she has chosen a successor, and chosen well. He is here so that the King will have no cause to refuse her. _Look, Majesty, one stands ready to take my place. I am not unexpendable._ “Madam,” he says, but he will not argue further in the presence of the King. She had counted on that. She has no offspring, but she has nurtured Quirrel’s mind. If he asks her to stay—

He must not be allowed to ask her to stay.

The King nods a fraction. His decision is made. “The three are chosen. Monomon, Lurien, Herrah.”

It is done. Forgive her, it is done.

It must be a trick, Monomon thinks as she pores over her old teacher’s records. The Old Light has grown bolder with Hallownest’s faltering. It haunts her dreams with visions of ancient moths, their lips moving in praise, their voices silenced by an endless refrain of THIEF, THIEF, THIEF. A dream still clings to her like a spider’s web: she was one of them, and she held in her hand (her hand!) a thing that could cut through the veil between sleeping and waking. It had the shape of a nail pommel. It sang to her as she wielded it.

If it is real, the Dreamers can be cut down, and the vessel compromised.

Monomon’s teacher, the archivist before her, hunted stories as relentlessly as a Primal Aspid hunts its prey. If the moths ever told tales of this weapon, Rhizo would have written it down. Monomon had been so careful, as she moved the archives from the City to Fog Canyon, from stone tablets to acid, to not miss a single record. But what if she had? What if—

There.

_Some of their tribe await the legendary Wielder, able to cut through dreams with a sacred blade. They say the weapon was lost in a long-forgotten dream, but it will return at light’s call, and with it the Wielder. I asked what ‘light’s call’ meant. For that, they sent me away._

Light’s call. The Old Light’s call. It is nothing more than instinct, but even instinct knows how to cut and kill. Monomon needs additional protection: a seal on her mind itself, outside the Old Light’s reach.

There is a spell for it. One spell, the only spell, with no time for the trial and error needed to create another. The Old Light crows victory at Monomon’s rage without understanding its source. Not him, she thinks, not him, not him, not him. He’s meant to inherit the Archives; he’s meant to serve the King in her stead. He’s meant for better.

But the enchantment requires a mind attuned to her own, and there is only one such mind.

Quirrel will be willing. The fourth, forgotten Dreamer, his life tied to hers, his body safe and his mind extinguished by the wilds beyond. The Old Light will not, cannot, find him there. There will be nothing of him to find.

Monomon haphazardly replaces the records, too eager to be rid of them, and goes down, down, to the acid lake at the bottom of the Archives. Uumuu — her newest creation, her most intelligent creation — rests there. She joins it, submerging herself almost to the mask. Patterns of electricity dance across its bell. It is asking: _What troubles Monomon?_

Under the surface, she makes shapes with her tentacles. _Could you protect the Archives alone?_

_Do not despair,_ it answers. A short tentacle brushes against her body, an offer of comfort.

“We must be brave,” she says aloud. The same words Quirrel told her when she explained the true origin of the vessels, the number that would be made only to be cast back into darkness. Five hundred thousand but one. The equation keeps adding back on itself: if Hallownest is worth five hundred thousand but one children of the King, it must be worth three Dreamers; if it is worth five hundred thousand but one plus three, it must be worth Quirrel.

He will agree with her, and that is the part she hates most. She stays with Uumuu, trying not to think and finding herself out of practice. There is no work for her to do. She’s ceded her responsibilities of head archivist to Quirrel, so he will be ready to take her place when the time comes.

The time will not come.

“I’ve returned!” Quirrel calls, voice echoing through the Archives. He’s taken to guiding travelers — mostly from Greenpath to Queen’s Station, he says, with few going the other direction — through the ranks of constructs that guard Fog Canyon from the mindless. The Uoma require strategy to pass safely, and the Ooma destroy any who attack others unprovoked. No infected bug can make it past them.

Monomon rises from the acid, waiting for the last drop to fall before she goes to Quirrel. She finds him at the records she just left behind, fixing their placement. He is as attuned to the Archives as she is. He would have done so well.

“Aba and cenda of this set were misplaced.” Quirrel straightens to look at her, clearly fretting. He knows that her misplacing a record is akin to her misplacing one of her own tentacles, and so he knows that something must be wrong. “Is it the Old Light?”

Quirrel will be willing, and that puts the fault in the asking. This is why the King named Herrah first. Not in spite of what she would ask in return, but because of it. If this servitude is not fair bargain, it is betrayal. For Hallownest, she thinks. For the world that was given to her, for knowledge, for thought. It is betrayal, and it is necessary.

“I’ve something to ask of you,” she says.

He should refuse. She wants him to refuse.

“Anything, Madam.”


End file.
